Erica LeBlanc is a treasure, not only because of her professional dedication and contributions to ACCE and our students, but also because she is the kind of person everyone wants as a friend.

Erica had been active in ACCE events long before she joined the board in 2005.  Once on the board, she served as the Journal editor (twice), Second Vice-President, First-Vice President, President, and Past-President.  Each of the leadership roles carries specific duties including membership, conference planning, leadership of the organization as a whole, and the nomination/election process.  Additionally, each member of the board chips in to help the others do whatever needs doing.  Erica has embraced each role as well as the spirit of "all for one and one for all."

In addition to the board roles, Erica has served as an ACCE representative in committees and task groups at the state level.  Two of the most significant in recent years have been the System Advisory Committee on Curriculum (SACC) and the original AB86 Work Group for the planning grant to restructure adult education in California.

As a member of SACC, Erica brings a deep understanding of both credit and noncredit curriculum to the table.  She gets us because she is us.  She sees implications of potential decisions that may harm or help our students.  She speaks up, time and again.  She builds bridges to decision makers who may not understand noncredit. 

The original AB86 work group consisted of about a dozen members, six drawn from community college noncredit programs and six from K-12 adult education.  The work schedule, particularly in the earlier months, was daunting, with twice-monthly trips to Sacramento, all-day meetings with homework in the evenings, and further assignments between trips.  In addition to the tangible work, there was a great need to build trust and relationships.  Erica, with her worker-bee spirit and her strong people skills, truly excelled in the work group, volunteering for assignments (including a lot of hands-on writing) while building sincere good will among members.

Erica is fun.  If you want a fast walk around Sacramento in the early morning, she's your gal.  If you want creative, possibly crazy ideas for a conference or a presentation, she's your gal.  If you want someone who will not only help develop a Frankenstein-themed PowerPoint on AB86 for a conference scheduled over Halloween, but will also show up for that presentation wearing a full Bride of Frankenstein costume, she's your gal. 

As Dean of Academic Affairs at Santa Monica College, Erica has carried a range of responsibilities including, but not limited to, the noncredit program.  For example, she has been the Accreditation Liaison Officer for the college, has led curriculum processes for both credit and noncredit, and was assigned at least one major musical presentation fraught with political connections and artistic drama.  Yet she has always kept noncredit as a priority in her work.  It speaks well for her work ethic and accomplishments that the college has now established a full-time noncredit dean position while asking Erica to continue fulfilling other significant full-time responsibilities for the college as a whole.

This award does not signal an ending. We know ACCE is deeply rooted in Erica's heart, and we plan to be in her schedule!  But the time is right, and the time is now, to recognize her for her ongoing, incredibly awesome contributions to ACCE and our students.

Santa Monica College’s Community Education Department has launched a new professional development catalog - SMC Extension. The catalog will serve as the main platform for promoting all workforce development focused continuing education courses and programs. An integral function of the SMC Extension catalog is to expand and promote the core concept of life-long-learning while supporting the College’s over-arching goal of creating career pathways and training opportunities for students at all levels.

The SMC Extension catalog is intended to provide a highly visible platform for disseminating information to reach the SMC Alumni community; perspective students for the College’s non-credit AEBG funded “Workforce Education and Training Programs, and Not-for-credit students seeking career training through the ETPL. This allows the catalog to functions in a very unique space, as it is the one College marketing tool that offers outreach to a full spectrum of students and speaks to a cross-section of the local community. 

SMC Extension is working to collaborate with other workforce development agencies and the catalog is providing the appropriate outreach vehicle.  The need for more collaborative activities between the College and other workforce development agencies is expected to increase as workforce development funding agencies seek to align career training with educational institutions that can provide short-term employment training with life-long-learning and career pathways opportunities.  Working towards this effort, the SMC Extension catalog is being utilized to promote several employment and pathways programs.  

The 2016 Spring/Summer SMC Extension catalog is serving as the central point for recruiting students to the BankWorks training program.  BankWorks is a JVS (Jewish Vocational Services) training program that has placed over 1,000 individuals into entry level-jobs in the banking industry.  The program attracts both experienced and inexperienced individuals seeking a network for entry into a career in banking.   Additionally the BanksWorks training history of success is built on the program’s close working relationship with employers within the banking industry.  SMC Extension collaborating in this program effectively supports the strategy to disseminate the message that Santa Monica College is interested in collaborating with local industry to develop relevant employment training programs. Also, the BankWorks program will help to bring attention to the broader offering of the College’s continuing education department, thus communicating to industry that community colleges’ continuing education departments are desirable partners.

Other programs that are currently being promoted through the SMC Extension catalog include the “Preferred Partner Program” and the Cisco Networking Academy.  Both are being viewed as opportunities for creating innovative training and outreach strategies.  SMC Extension is helping to reach the broader community and broadening the College’s potential for delivering non-credit and credit programming through partnerships and collaboration with industry, thereby removing one of higher education’s more traditional hurdles of keeping pace with industry in developing and delivering relevant and current curriculum. 

College of the Redwoods new noncredit program started in fall of 2013 and has grown to encompass more than 78 courses and 12 noncredit certificates.  The addition of noncredit at CR began more than three years ago when Julia Peterson proposed a noncredit program to Administration at College of the Redwoods.    Ms. Peterson worked with faculty, staff and virtually every department within the college to build an integrated noncredit program that would include educational community partnerships as well as college readiness classes that would align with credit classes to create seamless pathways into college credit programs.
Curriculum was developed to serve the community in all 10 noncredit areas, with a focus on college and career preparation.  Ms. Peterson worked with the community and the AB86 consortium to identify adult educational needs of the District, and worked with faculty to create curriculum to meet those needs.  The community found the classes met their needs and the new noncredit adult education program had over 2,890 Students by the end of its second academic year.

Under Ms. Peterson, CR’s Adult Education program partnered with the Humboldt County Office of Education and Humboldt State University to provide ESL classes to the parents of local elementary schools’ English Language Learning students.  The elementary school based students asked the program to expand and so it grew to include GED classes with support for Spanish speakers.

Another partnership included the development of a noncredit CalFire Wildland Fire Academy.  In this rural part of northern California wildland fire suppression is a rapidly growing and much needed career option.   The Wildland Fire Academy, developed and held in partnership with CalFire and the US Forest Service, graduated its first class of 27 new firefighters this spring, just in time for the graduates to apply for this year’s fire season positions.  The community was so supportive of the new program that the graduation ceremony was attended by many firefighters from local fire districts.  The local Cal Fire Unit Chief was among the dignitaries to address the graduates, and, of course, family and friends of the graduates joined everyone in celebration.

In October 2015, College of the Redwoods Adult Education program began the first face-to-face college classes in Pelican Bay State Prison, a level 4 supermax prison, with the introduction of noncredit Adult Education "College Bootcamp” classes to prepare inmates for college credit classes planned to follow.  Since that start, the first credit class has started within Pelican Bay State Prison, and the College Bootcamp classes continue to prepare inmates for the rigor of credit classes.
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Ms. Peterson identified a need with CR’s credit students when the Dean of Athletics mentioned that nearly 30% percent of his football team was disqualified in fall of 2013 due to academic ineligibility.  Ms. Peterson worked with the Dean, the head Football Coach, and the Counselor for Athletics to develop a “Cap & Gown” program that added noncredit basic skills classes to the already full schedule of the football team.  By fall 2014, the problem of losing football players to academic eligibility had been virtually eliminated and the Cap & Gown program was declared so successful at supporting student athletes that it was expanded to include all sports.  In fall of 2015 CR’s Athletics department had an unprecedented 41% of its athletes with a GPA of 3.0 or higher.  Academic ineligibility has changed from being a formidable issue to a negligible factor, and CR’s student athletes are showing how successful they can be in the classroom as well as on the field.
College of the Redwoods noncredit program continues to expand and grow from the roots started by Julia Peterson.  The isolated, rural district with a history of logging and fishing has a great need and appreciation for the new adult education programs being offered by their community college and we expect them to continue to support the program by attending classes throughout the district.